


Safe Within Us

by LysSerris



Series: One-Shot [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bellamione Cult Discord Game, Bellamione Cult Ilvermorny Cup, Dark Hermione Granger, Discord: Bellamione Cult, F/F, Identity Death, Implied Narcissa/Hermione, Loss of Identity, Necromancy, Ritual Magic, Soul Magic, Twinning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2020-07-12 09:35:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19943995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LysSerris/pseuds/LysSerris
Summary: A piece of me, kept safe with you.Or; Sometimes a Curse is a Blessing.





	Safe Within Us

**Author's Note:**

> This has been completely re-written. Follows the same, but marginally better edited and stated.

Quiet feet drifted and slid down the still malleable pile of loam and sand that she had excavated the night before. On either side were the remnants of two days worth of work, hard-earned effort dropped all around her. 

Piled detritus made up mostly of thin roots to old trees, black sand and earth filled with earthworms and maggots. A clump of metal implements lay discarded to the other side, her shovel and the bolt cutters she had needed to use for entrance. Magic made short work of Muggle metal but charmed and fortified as these chains had been, well, another method of breaking them was required.

She stood and cracked the length of her back, muscles spasming, body burning, fingers gently unclasping the length of twine wrapped up around her neck. There was no ceremony here, nothing started yet, and with little in the way of pomp or circumstance she placed the salt crystal and its hemp cord around the neck of the body lying still and immobile at her feet. 

It was either the technique the Mortician had used - _unlikely_ \- or the massive amount of magic that had been channelled through her veins before her death - _more likely_ -, but _something_ was keeping Her looks all prim and proper. Nary a single speck of decay or decomposition was visible upon Her still form, all the porcelain stretches of Her skin just as beautiful in death as it had been in life. If she tilted her head, squinted _just right,_ then she could still swear that the Witch was only sleeping for one night, and not eternity. If she wished, just hard enough, she could see those eyes open upon her own, filled with vibrancy and power. 

As it was the Witch stayed still, stayed quiet, unmoving and unfeeling. But not for long. Soon enough they would both be amidst the throes of what she hoped was to be a very enlightening revival.

 _After_ the Ritual was completed.

Within a week of expiration she had managed to lay her hands upon a Death Certificate that only three other people had ever seen, a text that labelled the official cause of death as a massive heart attack induced by the strain of an overactive Hex. The Weasley Matriarch had arced her spell up and over the curving length of shield that her target had erected, a screaming red bolt that smashed home in less than the blink of an eye. Spells were energy, and the Weasel had been unthinking - _uncaring_ \- of the amount she shoved into her wand. Those spells were supposed to remain nonlethal in general scenarios, but on occasion, they could be modified and bolstered by the distraction of sufficient emotional distress. 

They could be augmented, unintentionally of course, by the stress of losing a child.

As the Weasel had.

They could be enhanced, against all logic or reason, by the fear of losing another.

As the Weasel almost did.

It was Luck. Pure, dumb, simple luck.

Gods how Hermione _hated_ luck.

She steadied her breath and mind back to the task at hand, reaching down and moving lips to peer and search for signs of decay. The Witch's teeth would all still need to be fixed, as death was a poor dentist after all, but her little side-along Ritual would be more than capable of fixing all that up quite nicely. As for all the rest of Her cold tissue? Well, a life for a life would make due.

And really, since her chosen sacrificial lamb had never once cared for all the lives that she had scarred, neither would Hermione.

She pulled the wand from her holster and steadied her breath before firmly planting herself amid the soft ground. A wordless spell soon had the body rising above the grave and off towards the centre of the runic circle she had prepared only a few meters off to her left. The ring had been dug out of the soft ground not long before, and now lay there glittering in the darkness of the night. Powdered gypsum and pyrite were pulsing in slow waves, pressure crashing outwards from the centre to travel through her skin and body. The magic was waiting, open and ready, hungry for her to begin.

The second body atop the lines squirmed and screamed through silence.

The cemetery, if one could really call it that and not an empty plot of land in the middle of nowhere, had contained only one other occupant, and no overseer. She had been left free to do as she pleased until her work was complete, time forever so long as she had the will to move forward with her plans. And now after months of plotting, she had only minutes until freedom.

The Trace Lines that had been carved into her skin - _her soul_ \- had begun to itch and bleed again by the time she finished positioning the floating corpse. It wouldn't be perfect, nothing ever really was, but it was as accurate as she could make it with all the limitations imposed upon her. Hermione bit her lip, drew blood, and began to strip away the sweat-soaked clothing constricting her movement. Bit by bit her garments joined a pile behind her, shirt and pants and hiking boots of faux leather all piled up on top of one another. Everything fell away until she was clad only in the identical twin necklace to the one around the Witch's neck, naked and shivering with rampant anticipation - _longing_ \- instead of cold, or a chill.

She had only to spark the final catalyst before she could begin the Ritual.

The spell she had memorized wasn't particular on _what_ she would need, as it had instead listed the items as something she would _feel_ rather than some objective physical implement. In the end, she had simply decided to pick what she felt was best.

A blade.

_The knife._

The only object that had mattered to her once she managed to pick the body clean of all else. She had moved swiftly in the aftermath to ferret away the blade, a phial filled up with silvery memories, and a letter that she suspected the Witch had intended to send to her Sister but had never worked up the courage to do so. That trailing bit of thought led her back and away to some mixture of reality and memory; what would that Sister think? What would she say?

Would she fall down upon her knees to worship Hermione for going through all this trouble? Would she harden her heart, and instead denounce her as some crazed Dark Witch? Would she perhaps join at her side and help her to accomplish the daunting task?

Hermione didn't know.

And now, she would never know.

She had only ever told one other person about the sliver of madness wedged in between the delicate spaces of her chest. At the time she hadn't yet realized what that sliver was, not until many months of research later. Not until she once again wore the WItch's skin, and draped herself with mimicked clothing, did she understand just what _it_ was.

 _It_ was a copy. _It_ was a failsafe. Genuine - _true_ \- redundancy of the Soul.

She was no mere Horcrux, the Witch who had cursed her was well and truly gone beyond the veil of death. But it was a _cousin_ to the magic of a Horcrux. It was something that had been researched and developed in agest past, before being discarded as magic far too ungainly to wield. Something much too horrific to actually undertake. Something that was far too likely to fail when it was really needed. There was no need to fracture a soul in the creation of it, no, just a need to shatter one to finish it. 

And a person to bear it.

The cursed wound upon her arm had festered and rotted until all the shirts she wore were soaked through with a supply of blood that would never run out. Hundreds of hours of research had been burned away in her determination to fix the sickness that coated her soul.

None of it fast enough. None it right.

The sickness had lingered, the Curse had festered, and soon enough it had managed to rot a trail beneath her veins. Until one day, she went from hating the voices in her head to treasuring them.

Her Mark.

Her Curse.

Her burden, magic so dark and unwieldy that even when desperate, Voldemort had stared down his nose at it with fear and disdain in his eyes. She didn't know how she remembered that last bit, grasped it with a certainty that spoke to fact instead of assumption, but she did. All her confusion over it didn't change the fact that she _knew_ he had stared down upon Her with a mixture of pity and revulsion. She couldn't explain it. The Curse shouldn't have ever been able to do this to her.

But it had.

The Witch had been brilliant, one of a kind, the singular mind of a generation. It stood to reason that She may have changed it, adapted it, or catalyzed _something_ in such a different manner that instead of being a one-way ticket back from death, it was _more._

Made it more like she was wearing someone else's skin.

And bit by bit, day by day, she had continued to decay all along her insides. The Boys had never once been helpful to her plight, her calls for reassurance. Neither of them had wanted to hear a whit about her missing family. Her absent thoughts. Nor all the new ones that replaced those. No one at all had wanted to give any spare moment to a self-orphaned witch, no pity or gratitude for someone who hadn't struck the final blow.

Who hadn't lost family in such a public manner.

But Black?

_She had cared._

As soon as Black removed the stain of her former husband's name, as soon as she was free and clear of suspicion, she had become a wealth of knowledge for Hermione to dig into. A willing shoulder for her to lean on. A warm body beneath her in bed.

Until she learned of Hermione's plans, that was. Once she had an idea of what was in store, she had vanished. Disappeared. Gone one morning with no huff, no fuss, nothing at all but a note upon the countertop. She wouldn't dream of interfering, but she couldn't allow herself to be a part of it. The past was meant to stay in the past, the dead should remain as such. 

Hermione never got the chance to tell her that wasn't true. She wasn't dead, She was _screaming_ in her head. In her soul. A mass of black mist, black thoughts, darkened memories that nearly debilitated any sense of normalcy that she could have, or hold onto. And as the days ran on, the nights rolled over, the feeling had grown worse and worse. It never ended. Until one day she snuck out a phial - _the only one, her last_ \- and brewed a potion meant to calm her skin. Soothe her soul.

 _Their_ soul now, she supposed.

It certainly appeared to have been the correct assumption. A thought approved and bolstered when she managed to tear away from her mask and peer out into the world through eyes of coal-black. Two voices had spoken in unison, two voices in one tone.

But soon they would be whole again.

Hermione dropped the pretence of regret that had stained her face these past few weeks and slammed forth the knife with all the malice of her blackened heart. All her weight, all her anger, all the momentum she could muster. The tip of the dagger sank clean through to the other side, tearing and forcing its way into the Toad's windpipe. In less than a second, it was out the back of her neck and embedded into the cold dirt below her. Blood of the Enemy; stains of red and ochre pooled and grew as the waiting glyphs and runes at her side birthed magic unseen in millennia. Crushed mineral melted, merged, strings of red and blue shimmering with an intensity that mirrored her own.

All around her the night was low and cold, but still, she could see the moment that Life finally slipped away, awareness gone with it, a faint bloom pulled away and drawn along the leyline that they had mistakenly buried Bellatrix atop of. Pressure thudded heavy through her chest as the last dregs of life filtered and shifted through the ground, drawn along and sped off by the runes until it could settle and fill the cold flesh just an arms' length away from where she sat.

Hermione supposed she must look quite mad like this. Here she was, seated naked atop a still-warm corpse with her hands held tightly over the knife between her knees. Blood spatter covered her front, and her arms, drawn and wriggling as the Curse upon her arm pulled it in.

Ate it up.

Why her?

She didn't know. Not that she genuinely cared at this point, but the voice alongside her own had not once offered any clarification to the question. And so, like some ache she couldn't tend to, it lingered. Her first assumption was that it had been done for the sake of expediency. That it could have been anyone beneath Her blade.

Except _she_ had been there.

A girl of flesh and bone with just enough youth that she could be made useful. A girl full of warmth, trapped beneath a cold floor and the body above her. Ripe to be plucked, corrupted, tainted evermore.

Maybe she - _I, We_ \- had feared that soon enough, the end would come. Their life would be made forfeit. Perhaps they were a Seer? Or maybe none of it had meant anything at all. Or it could be that she had been chosen out of spite. 

It _could_ have been that last option; they remembered staring down at theirself with just the smallest crack of fear invading their mask of madness when the sword came into view.

They didn't know. _Wouldn't_ know. Or they would, soon enough.

The runes below her had been feeding steadily off the lingering traces of life that oozed in the ground beneath her, and with a _snap_ that she felt in her soul, it finished. The Hunger had been sated, and now the ancient Ritual set its sight upon their fragile core. It drew them up, slowly, fitfully, in the same moment that silvered wisps of smoke and ash leaked from the words embedded in their arm, pulling and twisting it with some sort of inhuman awareness. 

Stretching them like a rubber band brought to the point of breaking, only to release them at the last second.

It held, and they with it.

Ever so slowly, their awareness drifted forth as the body situated before them began to fall to disrepair, ageing, and deteriorating into dusty fragments. The magic swirling all around them was _working._

Soon enough, the tide began to turn as reddened tendrils of focused magic mixed with silver to form the inside of their new body. Bit by painstaking bit they could feel themself stretch and reconnect, piece by blessed piece. Seconds passed as hours before finally they lay there, born again. New. _Aware._

Black eyes opened in the same moment that two mouths let out a single scream, a sound that filled the cemetery with the haunted passion burning in their soul.

_"Whole-"_

_"Complete-"_

_"One."_

She, _They,_ the half of theirself that had been given over towards youth, began to shuffle forward in fits and starts that dragged their knife from bone and into the secondary rune circle embedded in the ground at their side. The glyph sparked beneath the moonlight, igniting all the runes surrounding it-

_"Pain!"_

She, _They,_ the half of theirself raised from beyond the grave, began to lean forward and claw along their jaw, the second joining in, screaming aloud as bits and rotted pieces filled in with dust and metal. Eventually, their pain subsided. Finally, they slotted theirself together with panting whispers and open mouths that shared the same breath, if not the same voice.

_"Pet..."_

A second passed before they leaned forward into theirself, bodies moving slowly, mind still catching up, bare touches explored and magnified. Warm hands against their skin, warm skin beneath their hands.

 _This_ was why the study of dark rituals with unclear origins was better left to those few experts in the field.

 _This_ was why the insane were locked away, forbidden from experimenting freely.

They were _one._ Yet still they were so very distinct, each half maintaining the majority share of their first body, but each of them so intermingled and wound around the other that words and thoughts and feelings had all lost any separate distinction. 

They just _were._

And oh by all the Gods was it rapturous.

Their answers flooded across a paper-thin barrier - _I did it I meant it I wanted it, I wanted you_ \- at the same moment a question was asked. Whatever was left of Hermione _Bellatrix_ Granger _Black_ had become something... new.

Something _more._

Darker, yes, certainly that was true. But also so much more significant, so much brighter than the sum of its parts.

A hand dipped, trailing low until they didn't - _couldn't_ \- know who had initiated the contact, or even whose hand it truly was. They only knew that as it traced a pale column of flesh, it was glorious. They only knew that as it pressed fingers into a sharp jaw, it was magnificent. They only knew that as a wet tongue sucked and nipped at fingertips, it was heaven.

They knew that soft kisses were enough to moisten, to lubricate. It, or the other, moved down low to pierce the warmth of a core so hot and fluid that they thought they would melt. Disappear. Collapse, into infinity.

Their passion outgrew itself as the night wore on around them until, eventually, their narcissism was burned into their hearts.

They stood when done, moving as one singular and yet dual entity. Marching off into the unknown.

**Author's Note:**

> Like Bellamione? https://discord.gg/pcfMU4F come on in and join the server!


End file.
